


Astonishingly Good At Being Okay

by futuresailors



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Internal Monologue, Missing Scene, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, SHIELD, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson Friendship, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, and Sharon, mostly about Steve and Natasha but with mentions of other Avengers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 21:34:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2041059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futuresailors/pseuds/futuresailors
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"He has a feeling that she’s the best person to have around in these situations."</i>
</p><p>Snapshots from Steve and Natasha's friendship, from the beginning of The Avengers to the aftermath of The Winter Soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Astonishingly Good At Being Okay

**Author's Note:**

> My obsession with Rogers and Romanoff: Best Bros Forever continues.

“I understood that reference!” Steve blurts out, so relieved to hear something familiar among the talk of alien gods and armies from outer space that he forgets, for a moment, how frustrated and lost he feels. For that split second, he can locate himself. But then, of course, he remembers that he’s not in a movie theater in Brooklyn in 1939, he’s hovering in the fucking sky surrounded by SHIELD operatives who don’t seem to care whether he understands what they’re talking about or not. He’s embarrassed before the words have even finished leaving his mouth. Fury stares at him blankly and Stark rolls his eyes before leaving with Banner. Out of the corner of his eye, however, Steve thinks he sees Agent Romanoff smile.

 ---

Steve tells Natasha to stay on the ground with him during the Chitauri attack because the two of them can’t fly, obviously, but also because he appreciates the way she treats him. Sometimes her eyes go soft when they turn in his direction, but it’s sympathetic, not patronizing. Since he woke up, too many people have treated him like a confused child or a hopeless old man, incapable of ever understanding his surroundings. She talks to him like a human being, which is all he wants. He has a feeling that she’s the best person to have around in these situations.

“Are you sure about this?” he asks as she prepares to hurl herself into the air after a monster.

“It’s gonna be fun,” she says, and Steve knows that his instincts about her were correct. It's the same kind of determination he once saw in someone who prefaced a life-threatening mission with a joke about the Cyclone.

 --- **  
**

Steve’s so exhausted and overwhelmed after the battle that when they all go to get food (because Tony Stark is a ridiculous human being), he can only sit at the table with his head in his hands. He and Natasha are the last ones to shuffle out of the crumbling building, and she lingers long enough to throw an arm around his shoulders without any of the others seeing.

“I’ll be around if you need me,” she tells him before running off to catch up with Clint. Steve is sure that tracking down the Black Widow would probably be impossible even if she lived next door, but the thought still makes it a little easier for him to breathe.

 --- **  
**

On a routine Avengers mission to rescue a few hostages, everyone manages to get in and out unscathed except for Steve. He evades every kind of A.I.M. weapon, but takes a stray arrow from Clint straight to the shoulder (“Aww, Steve, sorry, I thought you meant on _my_ left”). It’s not a severe injury by any means, and it doesn’t even hurt much, but he sits away from the others on the quinjet heading home, feeling tired and a little embarrassed. He’s considering just closing his eyes and going to sleep when Natasha glides over and sits down next to him.

“You doing okay?” she asks, gesturing toward the bandage covering his shoulder.

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, it’s fine,” he says. “I mean, I can’t really move my arm right now, but it’ll be fine in a minute.”

“Okay,” she says, smiling slightly. “I just wanted to check, because you know I’ve also dealt with the consequences of Clint’s lack of communication skills.”

Steve laughs. “It wasn’t entirely his fault. And I’m not mad or anything; Clint’s a good guy.”

“That he is. A total piece of work, but a good guy, yeah.” Natasha settles more comfortably into her seat and crosses her legs.

“So, is that...did you need anything else?” Steve asks.

“No, I just wanted to see if you were all right; that looks like it hurts and you’ve been pretty quiet. Wanted to make sure you’re not trying to pull any suffering in silence bullshit again.”

“I don’t-” he says, but she cuts him off.

“You do, sometimes. That’s okay; I get it. But, I don’t know, you looked a little lonely over here by yourself.”

“I’m okay.”

“I know you are. You’re astonishingly good at being okay, considering. But I understand the difficulties of ingraining oneself into a team, especially when the team’s as...boisterous as this one.”

Steve nods. “Okay.”

“But I’ll leave you alone if you want.”

“No, hey, it’s okay. I appreciate it.” he says, turning toward her and placing his one good hand on her shoulder for a second before letting it fall awkwardly back onto the seat between them. Natasha, who has never made a graceless movement in her life, takes it carefully and holds it there for the rest of the flight home. Steve closes his eyes, and his shoulder is mostly healed by the time they land.

 --- **  
**

The pop culture catch-up notebook is her idea.

 --- **  
**

“Was that your first kiss since 1945?” she asks in a stolen car in New Jersey, reaching over the console to tap her knuckles against his. She does it so affectionately that he can almost pretend they’re just two friends on a road trip, teasing each other to amuse themselves until they get where they’re going.

 --- **  
**

“We are, both of us, out of time,” intones the voice that used to be Zola, and everything explodes. Steve ducks frantically under the shield and wraps his body around Natasha’s. He sees her eyes go wide in the dark and feels her nails dig sharply into his arm as they both wonder how this is what their lives have become.

  **\---**

She’s sitting in Sam’s bedroom looking more shaken than Steve has ever seen her, and he desperately wants to give her a hug but stops himself. They’re long past the point where that could make anyone feel better.

 ---

“None of that’s your fault, Steve,” she says, and he nods even though he can’t believe her.

 --- **  
**

A day after Steve is pulled out of the Potomac, he wakes up in the middle of the night to find Natasha sitting on the opposite side of his hospital room, casually flipping through a magazine.

“What the hell, Nat? Please tell me you didn’t come in through the window.”

“Oh good, you’re awake. Sorry I didn’t drop by sooner.” She smiles, but even from several feet away Steve can see the concerned position of her eyebrows. “How are you feeling?” she asks. “And don’t you dare say ‘fine.’”

“I’m all right.”

“Steven.”

“I mean, everything hurts, but that won’t last for very long.” He tries to shrug, but ends up wincing because it turns out that shoulders fall under the umbrella of “everything.”

“But you’re going to be okay.”

“I am going to be okay,” he asserts. Natasha nods, then stands up and crosses the room.

“I can neither confirm nor deny that this building’s windows are not as secure as the hospital administration might like to believe, by the way,” she says as she sits down on the edge of Steve’s bed, careful not to jostle any injured limbs.

Steve sighs. “You could have just come during the day, you know.”

“Where’s the fun in that? And I had some things to take care of.”

“I know you did. I appreciate it.”

“Has Sam already come to see you?” she asks.

“Sam was here all day. But he went home when they told him that visiting hours were over, because he is a respectful and law-abiding citizen who also works a real job with normal hours.”

Natasha laughs. “I guess none of those words have ever been used to describe me.”

“I guess not.”

“Although he might not necessarily have that real job with normal hours anymore,” she points out.

“Nah, he’d never leave the VA. But he does seem to like working with us. Not that I really know who we even work for at this point.”

She shrugs. “Ourselves. And it looks like we’re going to be needing him.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, then hesitates. “Hey, Nat, are we...can you…” he fumbles, “what are we gonna do about this?”

Natasha looks at the ceiling and takes a deep breath.

“Please look at me,” he says quietly, and shifts to his left so that there’s enough room on the bed for her. “Come here. Think whatever you want about him, but please tell me the truth about what that is.”

She exhales slowly and stretches out next to him. “I think that it is going to be so much harder than any of us know. This is uncharted territory, Steve.”

He knows that she’s right. But he also knows that he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t try, and that if the roles were reversed, Bucky couldn’t either.

Natasha gathers his hand in hers and leans her head gently against his bruised shoulder.

“But I’ll see what I can do.”

 --- **  
**

She sees what she can do, and of course it’s above and beyond. When she hands him the folder he has to resist the urge to sit down in the dirt and read it cover-to-cover right there. But he can’t quite make eye contact with the photo of Bucky on the first page, and Natasha is trying to talk to him. She’s leaving, which Steve knows she has to, even though he wishes she could come with him and Sam to look for Bucky. He doesn’t question her plans, though, just promises to be careful and feels his eyes burn a little when she leans over to kiss him on the cheek.

  **\---**

He calls Sharon a few weeks later, because he's lonely and the search isn’t going anywhere and Sam is out of town visiting his mom (“Please do not have a depressing weekend,” he tells Steve when he drops by on his way to the airport). Natasha was right about Sharon, of course; she is nice, and incredibly smart, and unnecessarily apologetic about all of the lies that SHIELD made her tell. They end up talking for four hours and make plans to see each other again in two weeks. She kisses him goodnight and if he’s out of practice, she doesn’t seem to mind. Steve can’t help smiling with his lips still pressed against hers and thinks _maybe Natasha does know what’s best for me after all_.

He checks his phone when he gets home and finds a text from an unknown number, containing only a winky-face emoticon.

  **\---**

It’s two o’clock in the morning, there is a truly apocalyptic-sounding thunderstorm happening outside, and Steve wakes up to someone pounding on the door. He opens it to find Natasha, who he hasn’t seen in months, looking surprised and soaking wet.

“Nat?”, he says too loudly. “What’s going on?”

“Steve,” she says. “I found him, Steve. We found him, I know where he is, he’s-”

He has his arms around her before she can finish her sentence, because he doesn’t care where Bucky is as long it’s a place where they can get to him.

“ _Steve_ ,” she says again, voice muffled because her face is half-pressed against his chest.

“Is he okay?”

“I mean, ‘okay’ is relative but we’ve got him. We’ve got him and you can see him soon.”

There are dozens of things wants to ask her ( _Does he remember me? Did he hurt anybody? How the fuck did you track him down?_ ), but he starts to cry instead. She wraps her arms around his waist, and Steve thinks if he's in the wrong business, at least it’s a business that Nat’s in too.

 


End file.
